Selfsufficientish.com

Hi all,

(not sure if this should go in the wild food or fruit bit but here goes)

I'm planning to move my veg plot to another area next year to give me more space and I was going to leave the current small space as a soft fruit area with raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants, blueberries and maybe cranberries and gooseberries.

Anyway, on inspection of the new veg plot to be I've found a largeish patch of wild raspberries right where I was planning on sticking the greenhouse. I'm wondering if it's worth me buying raspberry canes when there is such an abundance of wild ones around. What I need to know though is if I cleared the area up to the raspberries and tried to just keep them would they take over like brambles? I dunno whether it's a good idea to try or if I'll regret keeping them!!

Thanks in advance

Kirsty

You'll regret it!!

I can only speak from my experience. When we bought our house there was a patch of wild raspberries near the veg patch. I stupidly dug a few up and planted three in the veg patch. They spread like you wouldn't believe.

I then spent hours in the autumn digging over and over this patch trying to remove their roots. They still popped up in the spring, but luckily by hoeing them off they haven't been too much of a problem.

I also found that the wild raspberries, whilst delicious, did not come off the plant whole, but fell apart into the individual little balls which make up the whole raspberry.

Since then I've bought proper raspberry canes!

When we moved onto our present allotment there were some established raspberry plants. We thought this was good, then we started to work the plot and found the roots absolutely everywhere, we tried to dig them all out and still have had little raspberry plants popping up all over the place. I cut back some beet spinach the other day and there happliy stick out of the ground was a raspberry plant.

But you can make raspberry leaf tea.

thanks - shall stick to the original plan!